What’s Facebook’s Big Announcement? And Will This Get Sexy?

Let me start by saying the answer to the second question is an emphatic yes, but first let’s talk about Facebook’s big thingy. Facebook is holding an invitation-only special event on Monday, and TechCrunch reports the big secret announcement they’re going to drop is the launch of their email service. That’s right, email through Facebook, because you don’t depend on them enough already. Allegedly nicknamed “Gmail Killer” by Facebook staff, and also known as Project Titan, the email service is assumed to be a full webmail client. It may even be able to prioritize emails based on whose pictures you stare at the most often without commenting– er, I mean, based on your closest friends. The Facebook email is rumored to also have full Office Web Apps integration, meaning the web-friendly versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote would be compatible with the email. That means if your sexy friend sends you a PowerPoint presentation on the guys she slept with at Duke, you’ll be able to open it even if you don’t have PowerPoint installed. This is important.

And here’s a Facebook protip: if you don’t want people to be able to find you or post certain incriminating things on your Facebook wall when you aren’t around to do anything about it, utilize the “super-logoff”. Instead of logging out, deactivate the account (but don’t take the extra steps to delete it entirely). Later on, you can reactivate the account and it will be exactly as you left it, with no embarrassing additions to your wall. I guess that would mean your mom can’t send you eighteen gifts from various games you don’t play, but that’s a small price to pay to keep your drinking buddies in check.

We also have a story involving cheese to justify the picture above. In Ireland, the government will be buying 53 tonnes (58.4 tons) of fresh Irish cheddar and offering a free block of cheese to every family. The measure to help ease poverty very, very slightly is garnering plenty of criticisms. Some are even cheesed off about it you might say, if you were wearing a spinning bow tie and holding a seltzer bottle (and I am). One cheeky Dubliner even commented, “This is just crackers. The scheme is full of holes. This is the last straw – it’s really grated on the whole community.”

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Facebook’s “Gmail Killer” Project Titan to be announced on Monday (TechCrunch)

Irish government is offering every Irish family a free block of cheese. They’re suddenly wishing they were in Oprah’s audience instead. (Telegraph)

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New Zealander Paul Hunkin set up a bot that buys cheap items with free shipping from auction sites, and it even tweets what it bought. Hunkin says, “Google didn’t reveal anyone doing this already, and after asking a few people, the general opinion was that doing this was a terrible idea that would inevitably end badly. So obviously I had to do it.” If this turns out like the XKCD strip that inspired it, he’ll end up on some very interesting watch lists. (CNET)

The first drive-thru sex toy shop in the U.S. has opened in Alabama. (USA! USA!) The state of Alabama still bans the sale of sex toys, but there are some loop, uh, holes that people can take full, sexy advantage of by filling out a “medical questionnaire” giving their medical reason for needing the dildo. The dildo, never their dildo, of course. (AlabamaLive)

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Teens who use condoms the first time they have sex are 20 times more likely to use condoms regularly than the other leading laundry detergent– wait, what was I talking about? Oh, right, teens and sex. Why is Chris Hanson in my kitchen? (GOOD)

Mark Zuckerberg has an estimated net worth of $6.9 billion. That’s 6.9 times cool. What can he buy with that? A couple mansions, a couple jets, a couple private islands, 106 McLaren F1 automobiles, 12 Bugatti Veyrons, Paul Allen’s yacht, 2000 pounds of gold, 365 days in a luxury hotel, The LA Lakers, and the Space Shuttle. And he’d still have half the money left. What a bastard. (TheNextWeb)